Immortality. It’s an age-old idea that has plagued humankind for centuries. Many men over the years have sought to find some way to live forever, but futurist Raymond Kurzweil believes he may have found the best way forward. According to Kurzweil’s new book, nanorobots may be the key to stopping human aging and letting us live for thousands of years.
Of course, there are many concerns about the possibility of living for thousands of years—let alone forever. And yet, new anti-aging therapy continues to be a common focus of research for acclaimed scientists. While many seek to slow down the deterioration of our bodies and simply prolong our lives, others like Kurzweil appear to have loftier goals.
Kurzweil writes heavily about the use of nanotechnology for this pursuit in both his new book called The Singularity is Nearer and in an essay published in Wired. Both discuss the blending of biotechnology with artificial intelligence to help us overcome our feeble human lives by cutting down on human aging as much as possible.
See, one of the biggest issues with aging is that our bodies and cells start to accumulate errors as more cells reproduce over and over. Many anti-aging therapies seek to cut down on these errors, allowing the body to repair itself more quickly—thus slowing down aging as a whole. For Kurzweil, the only solution here is to “cure aging itself.”
A lofty goal, for certain. Of course, Kurzweil admits that his projections may sound absurd at the moment, but he believes that advancements in medical nanorobots will soon help us cure human aging across the spectrum. Each human body may even require up to several hundred billion nanorobots to repair and augment degrading organs and keep them running in peak condition.
This is just one person’s vision of the future, though. So, if the idea of having hundreds of millions of nanobots streaming through your body isn’t exactly enticing, you probably aren’t alone. It will be interesting to see if Kurzweil’s projections come true—though, based on the current state of AI, I’m not exactly holding my breath.
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